Drugs that promote neuron development, and thus neurite outgrowth, will be of use for treating a wide variety of diseases and trauma that result in neuropathy and nerve injury, including but not limited to spinal cord injury, neuropathy resulting from diseases such as diabetes and stroke, Parkinson's disease, and other forms of dementia including Alzheimer's disease.
The most frequently used methods for neurite outgrowth quantification and analysis are based on manual or, in some cases, on semiautomatic imaging tools for neurite tracing. Automated neurite tracing, however, is a prerequisite for the use of neurite outgrowth analysis in high content screening. Automated tracing of neurites in a population of cells is difficult due to ambiguities caused by neurite intensity variations and multiple neurite crossings, or tangles, which are created when a neurite cross itself or another neurite.
Thus, improved methods for analyzing neurites and neurite outgrowth would be of great value in the art.